CropLife America is a trade association representing the manufacturers of pesticides and other agricultural chemicals. It was formerly known as the American Crop Protection Association, and before that as the National Agricultural Chemicals Association.

CropLife America's rhetoric, and its name, indicates a shift in the pesticide industry's rhetoric and approach to public relations in the last decade. "CropLife America's mission," says its website, "is to foster the interests of the general public and CropLife America member companies by promoting innovation and the environmentally sound manufacture, distribution and use of crop protection and production technologies for safe, high-quality, affordable and abundant food, fiber and other crops."

The pesticide industry hopes to be known as the "crop protection" industry. The image it presents is one of a hi-tech, efficient, responsible, and green industry that is already thoroughly regulated to assure the safety of its products. While the industry quietly pursues an anti-regulatory agenda to assure no pesticides would be removed from the market, its trade association claims its aim is to "promote increasingly responsible, science-driven legislation and regulation."

The agricultural chemicals industry's new public face closely resembles the public image of the chemical industry's largest trade group, the American Chemistry Council, under the umbrella of "Responsible Care."

In 2002, CropLife America launched a public relations campaign that emphasized the everyday uses of pesticides and ag biotech, which it says the public often overlooks. This included safe food, and protecting homes and schools, it said. "For too long our industry had focused exclusively on promoting our successes in safety assessment and management," said CropLife president Jay Vroom. "These messages, including rigorous testing and EPA regulations, are valid and continue to resonate, but they are not enough," said Vroom. (Chemical Week; New York; Apr 10, 2002, volume 164, issue 15, p.5)

In March 2004, CropLife poured funding into a campaign to defeat a Mendocino County ballot initiative - known as Measure H - that would make the country the first to ban genetically engineered crops. In the lead up the the vote CropLife contributed over $500,000 - more than seven times that of the initiative supporters - to defeat the proposal.[1] Despite the massive campaign against the initiative, the bio-tech industry suffered a humiliating defeat. The measure passed by a margin of 56% to 43%.[2]

Els Cooperrider, the owner of a Ukiah organic brew pub and a champion of the initiative told the Press Democrat "passage of Measure H is just the beginning. We're the first county, but the revolution is just starting".[3]

Documents Contained at the Anti-Environmental Archives

Documents written by or referencing this person or organization are contained in the Anti-Environmental Archive, launched by Greenpeace on Earth Day, 2015. The archive contains 3,500 documents, some 27,000 pages, covering 350 organizations and individuals. The current archive includes mainly documents collected in the late 1980s through the early 2000s by The Clearinghouse on Environmental Advocacy and Research (CLEAR), an organization that tracked the rise of the so called "Wise Use" movement in the 1990s during the Clinton presidency. Access the index to the Anti-Environmental Archives here.

ALEC is a corporate bill mill. It is not just a lobby or a front group; it is much more powerful than that. Through ALEC, corporations hand state legislators their wishlists to benefit their bottom line. Corporations fund almost all of ALEC's operations. They pay for a seat on ALEC task forces where corporate lobbyists and special interest reps vote with elected officials to approve “model” bills. Learn more at the Center for Media and Democracy's ALECexposed.org, and check out breaking news on our PRWatch.org site.

Issues relating to the Farm Bill and USDA conservation programs, Issues relating to NPDES permits for aquatic pesticides and "Waters of the U.S." guidance. Issues relating to pesticide use and registration.

Advice and counsel of pesticide regulatory matters including application of Clean Water Act permitting requirements to pesticide applications (H.R. 872), and US EPA's Clean Water Act guidance related to "Waters of the US".

Congressional consideration of issues associated with the development of the congressional budget for fiscal 2013 (H. Con. Res. 112) and how these deliberations might impact onf authorization and appropriations legislation addressing programs and issues of importance to the crop protection industry, Congressional efforts to reauthorize the General Farm Act and how those efforts and issues associated with those efforts and matters under consideration could impact on issues of importance to the crop protection industry in the United States. Administrative actions under consideration by the Environmental Protection Agency pursuant to the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), and how those actions could impact on state agencies that have assumed enforcement responsibility under FIFRA or how those actions could impact on other matters of importance to the crop protection industry

In 2008, Croplife spent $2 million on lobbying.[10] It spent $1.8 million in 2009,[11] $2.3 million in 2010, and 2.4 million in 2011.[12]